The measurement of surface waves by spaceborne SAR, airborne SAR and buoy along the coast of Hainan

In this paper, the ocean wave spectra and the associated wave parameters are retrieved from the airborne and spaceborne SAR images which are acquired nearly simultaneously near the east coast of Hainan. The wave parameters from SARs are compared with the observation from Wave rider buoy over the study site. The wave spectrum is derived by the inversion of linear transform which relate the ocean wave spectrum to the SAR image spectrum. The errors of retrieval wave propagation direction of waves for both SARs are less than 20° and the errors of the wave height, wave length and wave period is less than 20%, which shows the good agreement of SAR wave parameters with in-situ observation. The results can be used to evaluate the performance of ocean wave observation by spaceborne and airborne SAR.